Riverwest proves to be a good spot for Florentine Opera practices

Mario Costantini and his wife, Cathy, decided a rehearsal site for the Florentine Opera Company would be a good fit in the Riverwest neighborhood. The opera is using space near the factory of the Costantinis’ furniture business, La Lune Collection. “Riverwest has changed. It’s in the process of being restored,” he says. Credit: Mike De Sisti

It makes sense that "Tosca" would be the first production ever rehearsed in the Florentine Opera's new Riverwest home.

The tragic hero in the Puccini masterpiece is Mario Cavaradossi, the lover of singer Floria Tosca, and Tosca's first five words in the libretto are "Mario!", "Mario!" and (calling angrily) "Mario! Mario! Mario!"

That's music to the ears of the Florentine's new landlord, Mario Costantini, a factory owner, opera lover and civic activist who over the years helped found a Riverwest youth center, launched the citywide "Mad Hot Ballroom" school dance competition and helped put together the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center at 325 W. Walnut St.

Costantini's La Lune Collection business - it makes high-end rustic furniture out of logs, branches and saplings and counts Oprah Winfrey, Ralph Lauren and Disney among its clients - has operated at 930 E. Burleigh St. since 1986, just a little east of the parking lot where Hernia Movers ("The Potentate of Totin' Freight") parks its trucks.

The offices of the factory front on Burleigh, and next door, a companion Cream City brick building owned by the company previously served as offices and warehouse for Elements East, a Whitefish Bay furniture store. But that business moved out this year.

Noele Stollmack, production and design director for the Florentine who lives in a condo across Burleigh from La Lune, noticed the for-rent sign, looked the place over and brought it to the attention of her bosses at the opera, who had long been looking for a permanent home for their costume and wig shops and rehearsal space.

It made perfect sense to use the Burleigh building because Costantini's wife, Cathy - the vice president of La Lune - was on the board of the Florentine. The Costantinis negotiated a five-year lease with the opera ("They're getting the nonprofit rate," says Mario). Then-board president Wayne Lueders and his wife, Kristine, made a big contribution to refit the space for opera use, and more money was raised to finish the job.

Using the space

In August, the Florentine started using the new space to rehearse various community concerts, and in September, it held its annual meeting there, catered by Nessun Dorma, a Riverwest Italian restaurant that takes its name from Luciano Pavarotti's signature Puccini aria.

Ald. Nik Kovac, who represents the area, attended, observed the crowd in cocktail wear and noted that it was something new for the neighborhood.

"I don't know if Riverwest will become the Third Ward all of a sudden," he said, "but it'll be in the orbit of that world."

"It's a very exciting thing," said Howard Leu, chairman of the Riverwest Neighborhood Association.

Chorus rehearsals for "Tosca" began in the space Oct. 12, and on Nov. 2, the principal singers arrived for rehearsals. The production runs from Nov. 20 to Nov. 22 at the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts.

Mario Costantini listened to opera on the radio as a kid in Argentina. His aunt Sylvia Balaban, an international opera singer, brought him toys she bought on her travels, a thrill for young Mario.

Cathy McSweeny grew up in a doctor's family in Janesville, and her parents took her to the opera in Milwaukee and Chicago, and listened on the radio on Sundays, after her dad finished his rounds at the hospital.

Costantini's family moved to the United States when he was 10, and his father set up an upholstering business in Milwaukee. Mario and Cathy met at Marquette University, where they were both students in the 1970s, and started attending Florentine Opera productions together.

His plan was to go on to medical school and practice medicine back in Argentina, but about the time he graduated from Marquette in 1977, he got a letter ordering him to report for service in the Argentine military. The country's military junta was building up to a border confrontation with Chile at the time, and he decided to stay in Milwaukee.

He and Cathy began an interior design business that within a couple years morphed into La Lune. They married and then in 1986 bought the Burleigh St. headquarters of H. Schmidt & Sons, a venerable construction firm that specialized in building churches.

"When we moved here in 1986, this was not a great neighborhood," Costantini said. "I remember people saying to us, 'Why do you want to move your factory to the ghetto?' "

But they bought the place anyway, and became involved with improving the neighborhood.

In 1989, he teamed up with ESHAC Inc., the neighborhood group that served Riverwest then, to create the Holton Youth Center, an organization designed to get gangs off the neighborhood's streets and into constructive programs. The center ran independently for five years, and then became a branch of the YMCA, which ran it until pulling out last year. Costantini and others are discussing ways of reviving the center.

For the children

Later, when Cathy Costantini was serving on the board of the First Stage Children's Theater, she drafted her husband to serve on a committee to develop what became the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center, an educational and rehearsal space on Walnut St. for several youth arts groups.

And several years ago, excited after seeing the documentary "Mad Hot Ballroom," in which New York City's schoolchildren battle for supremacy in ballroom dancing, Mario Costantini agreed to join the board of Milwaukee's Danceworks and got it to launch a similar competition for Milwaukee fifth- and sixth-graders. The program is now in its fourth year, with 45 schools participating.

Then came the Florentine, which the Costantinis consider a big vote of confidence in Riverwest, in a year in which the neighborhood's image has taken a beating after two high-profile homicides over the summer.

"I don't think the Florentine would have moved into this space in 1986," Mario said. "Riverwest has changed. It's in the process of being restored."

As for the opera company, it's using the move to make "more of a commitment to having a footprint in the community," says general director Bill Florescu.

Meanwhile, the people who work on the productions are delighted with their new home, production manager Stollmack says.

"It's fantastic," she said. "Everyone that works for us is thrilled to have a space we can call our own" after years of storing costume material and props in a West Allis warehouse and trucking them to rehearsals and productions via "road boxes."

At a rehearsal last week, performers had praise for the new space, too - among them Cynthia Lawrence, the down-to-earth diva who plays Tosca in this production.

With a résumé full of leading roles in opera houses all over the world - including more than 70 performances on tour with Pavarotti - she brings a little class to the old neighborhood.

Plus, she gets to practice singing "Mario! Mario! Mario!" right next door to Mario.